Fact Check

Tweet Claims Clinton to Drop Out of Presidential Race

A tweet purporting to be from a CBS reporter claiming that Hillary Clinton was dropping out of the presidential race is a poorly executed hoax.

Published Sept. 4, 2016

 (Flickr)
Image Via Flickr
Claim:
CBS reporter Hannah Chanpong tweeted that Hillary Clinton was dropping out of the 2016 presidential race.

On 2 September 2016, a screenshot of a tweet purportedly sent out by a CBS reporter claiming that Hillary Clinton would drop out of the presidential race appeared on social media:

hannah chanpong

The image displayed above was picked up by unscrupulous web sites, and was shared with the claim that Chanpong deleted the tweet almost immediately after it was posted (presumably to explain why it could not be found on her timeline):

CBS News political reporter Hannah Chanpong Tweeted -- then quickly DELETED -- a report that Hillary Campaign Staff are RESIGNING and there are worries of Hillary DROPPING OUT of the Presidential Race after yesterday's huge FBI data dump.

The fact that an accredited political reporter from one of America's largest news organizations would Tweet this is nothing short of STUNNING.   The fact it was quickly DELETED makes the information all-the-more believable.

However, this wasn't a tweet posted and then mysteriously deleted by Chanpong; it is actually a fake that was never posted to her account to begin with.

Creating a fake tweet is a relatively easy process. Even so, most fraudsters (whether through ignorance or carelessness) simply cannot get all the details right. The biggest giveaway that the tweet here is a hoax is that it contains "retweets" and "favorites." However, Twitter got rid of "favorites" in November 2015 — nearly a year before this hoax tweet went out — and replaced them with "likes."

A tweet sent out on 2 September 2016 would have the number of "retweets" and "likes" displayed, not the number of "favorites":

clinton retweets

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.